Nude Men

happens.”
    She continues stroking me and tells me more of her story, not one word of which I hear, even though it’s fascinating. So I tell her, “Speed up the pacing. Get to the point more quickly. You’re too slow. It’s boring. I can’t concentrate.”
    She strokes faster.
    I still can’t hear what she’s saying. “Blah blah blah blah,” I tell her. “Hurry! Get to the point.”
    She strokes faster and continues her story.
    “Louder! I can’t hear you!” I say.
    She talks louder and strokes harder. Suddenly, something feels strange.
    “I can’t concentrate! I can’t hear you!” I cry out, panicked. “I haven’t heard a single word you’ve said in the past five minutes, do you realize that?”
    “I’m not offended,” she says.
    “You talk too loud and too fast, and you don’t articulate well enough, and you skip vital information. It’s unclear, it’s too intense.” I look at her, and I am startled. “My God, you’re nude! When did you get so undressed?”
    “When Humpty Dumpty was getting reconstructive surgery to remove his scars.”
    “I don’t remember that part. I couldn’t concentrate on your damn story, which is a shame cause it was so good. I wish I had heard it.”
    “Let’s do one thing at a time, then,” she says, and slides her hands inside my underwear again.
    I take them out. “No, let us not do one thing at a time. Let us not do anything at all except get you dressed. Get dressed.”
    “Never.”
    “Never?”
    “Ne-ver.” She lowers my pants and my underwear, and I feel terribly awkward, being exposed like this. Sara’s nudity never seems as naked as my nudity, for some reason.
    “That’s it. It’s over,” I tell her. “You’re finished. We’re finished. I’m calling your mother right now. This minute. I’ll tell her everything that happened, and I’m bringing you back home.” I pick up the phone, but Sara slams my hand down. “Stop it, Jeremy! You know you want me. And you know the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, and sick with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.”
    “Where do you hear these wisdoms? From your mother?”
    “No, Lady Henrietta did not say that. It was Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray. And I’ve put that quote at the beginning of my Humpty Dumpty biography. It’s the message of the story.”
    “No wonder your teacher thinks you’re having problems at home.”
    “Well fuck you. Doesn’t that quote have any effect on you? Don’t you see the truth in it?”
    “Yes, it does have an effect on me. It snaps me back to reality with the word ‘unlawful.’ The word ‘monstrous’ causes a nice special effect in me as well. Would you like to see what it is?”
    “What?”
    I pick up the phone and say, “To call your mother.”
    Sara grabs my cheeks, squishes them angrily in her palms, and desperately shouts in my face, “But you’re misinterpreting Oscar Wilde! “
    “Let go,” I say, articulating with difficulty through my squished cheeks.
    She lets go, huffs, raises her arms, and slowly starts turning around, swinging her hips and undulating her body. As she turns, she snaps her fingers and rolls her wrists and stamps her feet like a Spanish dancer. Her beautiful breasts jiggle like Jell-O.
    Calling Henrietta is not such a good idea, after all, especially while Sara is trying to distract me. So I take out some blank paper and a pen.
    “What are you doing, Jeremy?” asks Sara.
    “I am writing a letter of confession, which I will mad to your mother as I escort you back home.”
    I write down “Dear” on the paper, and then wonder if I should write “Henrietta,”
    “Lady Henrietta,” or “Lady,” or “Ms. Lady Henrietta,” or what. Sara grabs the pen from my hand and draws the face of Mickey Mouse on my letter.
    She hands back the pen and says, “Now you can write the letter around it, and I’m sure Mom will appreciate the drawing. Letter reading is more fun when there’s an illustration that explains the text.”
    I tear up the letter and start again on a new sheet. I write, “Dear Henrietta,” and a comma. Sara tries to grab the pen from me again, but this time I am quicker than she is, and I hold the pen out of her reach. She lunges for my letter, but I beat her to it and press the letter and my pen against my chest and remain stiff and motionless